Classification may be the work of Reputation Collectors, or of Reputation Aggregators, or perhaps ideally an open system that can handle a "source" record. Source is who put this record in, who thinks the classification is X.

You can then choose which source(s) you will use/trust. You could selectively drop (ignore) sources you find you don't want to trust. You could set up your own interpretation / voting:

- Source "ReSpam" says this sender is a school

- Source "Montgomery Report" says this sender allows anonymous webmail signups and has no outbound rate limiting.

I am not suggestion that this classification system become a reputation system unto itself, with evidence files or an unlimited number of data points. Rather that it stick to a narrowly defined area of "classifications useful in differentiating characteristics of email sources." Other reputation collectors could reference the ID or classification numbers in this system if they wished to, and attach other data points within their own databases.   more »